BREWER – The plans for Brewer Community School, a proposed combined elementary-middle school on Parkway South, will be presented to residents and the state in two weeks.

The designs for Brewer’s proposed pre-kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school are on a State Board of Education subcommittee agenda for Oct. 1 and will be presented at 7 p.m. that evening to residents for a straw, or nonbinding, vote.

If both give their nod of approval, the designs will be presented Oct. 10 to the full State Board of Education committee for funding, Superintendent Daniel Lee said at Monday’s new school construction committee meeting.

“This plan incorporates many of the ideas” from meetings held over the last two years, he said.

“This will be one of the largest schools the state has ever built,” Lee said, of the proposed 156,350-square-foot building. “This thing is big. I believe it will meet our needs for the next 50 years.”

The new structure would replace five aging elementary and middle schools in the city, and would house about 1,100 students when opened in 2010, if all goes as scheduled.

The designs were created and fine-tuned over the last year to address requests from residents, the committee and the Department of Education, said architect Richard Graves, of WBRC Architects-Engineers of Bangor. WBRC was hired in March 2006.

The meetings “just continued to improve this plan,” he said.

The plans place the new school on the location of the closed Pendleton Street School and include moving the outdoor running track to the western side of the lot.

The exterior designs for the building keep Brewer’s history in mind, Graves said.

“We included Brewer brick and we took some of the middle school window elements,” he said.

The color contrasts are used to break up the lengthy appearance of the building, which is around 400 feet long, Graves said.

The site plans include a parent drop-off area and parent or visitor parking, a bus drop-off area and turnaround, parking for teachers and staff, and separate wings for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, first and second graders, third and fourth graders, fifth and sixth graders and seventh and eighth graders.

They also include a cafeteria, art and media center, a gymnasium for physical education, two outdoor play areas, a new track and a school auditorium for assemblies and performances.

If approved, the state would pay the entire estimated $35 million school construction cost. The committee decided to ask residents for an additional $2.6 million to pay for a school auditorium. While the state pays for cafeterias and gymnasiums, it no longer covers auditoriums as part of school construction costs.

“This isn’t an extra auditorium. This is a replacement,” Brewer Middle School Principal Bill Leithiser said. “Yes, it has 199 more seats [than the one at the middle school] but it’s replacing something that we already use that we won’t be able to use” once the new school opens and the middle school closes.

The committee also considered adding parking above the 175 slots paid for by the state, but at an estimated $5,500 per additional spot, decided not to ask residents for additional funds. Nevertheless, an area for additional parking has been set aside for potential future use.

If the State Board of Education approves the designs on Oct. 10, the next big step would be a local referendum to present the entire project to residents. The referendum is scheduled for Dec. 4.

Final approval must be given by the end of the year to qualify for the next round of state school construction funding.